This post is going to be a little bit different.  We’re sitting in New Zealand right now and I’m still behind on our Central America adventure and we think people would rather hear about our time here rather than the rest of our time in Central America.  So I’m going to hit the highlights of the remainder of our time in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama in one big post so I can move on to New Zealand.  If you have any questions about anything I’m about to run through, just leave a comment and we’ll try our best to answer it.  (wifi is spotty here in New Zealand)

San Juan

Nicaragua was our favorite country we visited in Central America.  We spent almost a month in San Juan del Sur right on the pacific coast.  That wasn’t our intention when we got there, but I hurt my ankle and was laid up for a week or so.  I was walking down the sidewalk and a woman threw soapy water out her door right in front of me and I slipped off a curb and sprained my ankle.  Luckily, it was towards the end of our time there and we had already done a bunch of activities, so I just hung out in the hostel with my foot up playing games and reading.

We were in a 6 bed dorm room, which is 3 bunk beds, that has a shared bathroom/shower.  It sounds a lot worse than it is.  We actually had the room to ourselves twice during our stay.  It had a different breakfast every morning that was included in the price of the room and it was only a block from the beach.

San Juan checked a lot of our boxes we like…a great place to sleep, great places to eat, and lots of things to do to pass the time. It had great wifi and a very sociable atmosphere.  It also had a bar on the roof that was open five days a week when it wasn’t too windy.

We went on our first pub crawl here.  Thursday nights, there’s a Canadian bar that hosts it, and it goes to three or four different bars. We made it to the third one before heading home and passing out.  Getting old is fun.

We took free salsa dancing lessons at the Howler Monkey bar and got pretty decent at it.

We went to Hermosa (‘beautiful’ in spanish) beach, and Maderas beach and watched the surfers and found our own secluded spot to watch the waves.

Our hostel was just down the street from a little tienda, or store, that had everything from shampoo to pasta to beer, and we got to know the locals that hung out there because we would buy beer and then sit outside on the benches they had outside the store.  It sounds ghetto, but it was cheaper than going to the bar and we enjoyed talking to the locals.

We found the local market that sold tank tops for less than three dollars.  We bought a couple and we wish we had bought more.

We found a great place on the beach that had a good happy hour deal for beers and margaritas.

We watched the sunset countless times, usually after we would watch the locals play beach volleyball.  While we were there, we saw a volleyball tournament…they take it pretty seriously there.

It was just lovely, and cheap and even though it was hot and windy, it’s the first place we’ve been that I’d like to visit again one day.  I put a lot of pictures of San Juan on my Instagram so check there for more pictures from there.

Costa Rica

We stayed in three places in Costa Rica.  The first was the Santa Elena/Monteverde area.  This was a tiny mountain town that got cold at night and we loved it because it was so, so hot in the rest of Central America.  Again, we found a little great place to stay.  It sold itself as a Bed & breakfast, but it was pretty much a hostel that catered to families and couples.  The room was a little strange though.  We had our own private room with our own bathroom and shower, but the bed was a bunk bed!

We ended up staying a week here, in part because of the awesome couple that ran it.  They were friendly, outgoing and hilarious.   They also served a great breakfast in the morning that was included in the price of the room.  One night Francisco was about to leave for the evening when he came up to us on the couch while we were watching TV.  He had forgotten to tell the German couple that just checked in where the other entrance to the hostel was.  Long story short – they close and lock the front door at 9pm, but there’s another entrance where your key will work, but you have to know where it is.  We assured him, we’d let them know about the secret entrance and get their breakfast order for the morning.  After a while, it felt like we were just family in town visiting.

Mandy tried to go zip-lining.  I knew better than to try and join her since I’m scared of heights, and the one she was going on boasted the highest zip line in central america.  So, I noped out of that invitation.  When she got back, she told me she had to stop halfway through because it was so scary.  I chose wisely.

We went to the Curi Cancha reserve here too and it was so beautiful…we’ve never seen anything like it.  We saw hummingbirds, the famous blue butterfly that’s on all the t-shirts here, and even saw the fabled Quetzal.  Bird watchers were going nuts here. We spent about 3 hours walking around here and loved every second of it.  I’d go back just to do this walk again in a heartbeat.

We then took a jeep-boat-jeep to La Fortuna and were a bit confused when it didn’t involve an actual jeep.   A shuttle took us to lake Arenal, and then we got on a boat and went across to the other side of the lake, then got on another shuttle that took us into La Fortuna.  The trip saves you about 8 hours of having to travel around the lake.

La Fortuna had two highlights.  The first was this amazing ice cream shop we found.  We were only here two nights, but ate at this place like 5 times.  It was amazing.

Then we took a taxi out to the waterfall.  Holy crap.  Our Central America guidebook had a picture of this waterfall on it, so we were excited to see it and it did not disappoint.  We had to walk down a huge set of stairs to get to it though, so I was fighting my fear of heights the whole way but knew it would be worth it.  The water was freezing but the views were amazing.

On our way out to the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, we stopped along the way and did white water rafting and I LOVED it!  It was a four hour tour of a river and had 3 and 4 stage rapids and we didn’t flip over once!  We got to a part of the river where we could jump out of the raft and float down the river…I wish I had my camera with me..there were two huge cliff walls going up either side of us with luscious green forest surrounding us.  It was amazing.

We made it to Puerto Viejo later that night.  This was our last stop in Costa Rica and my personal favorite.  We would rent bikes from our hostel for the day and ride around to all the different beaches, hopping off and watching the surfers, jumping in the waves, and relaxing on the beach.

We had the famous chicken dish here everyone was telling us to try.  It was basically a stew of chicken wings and thighs in a curried red sauce…I’ve never had the meat fall off of chicken like this before.  We added a little of the hot sauce on the table and it was perfect. We at here a few times.

We spent a week rinsing and repeating a version of beach, bike, eating, drinking for a week.

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Panama

We only went to two places in Panama but our time there was eventful.  We started with two weeks on the Caribbean coast on the islands of Bocas del Toro.  The main town wasn’t much to look at and was even a little dirty, although the hostel we stayed in was probably one of our favorites just because of how they organized their fridge.  Each room had a corresponding number assigned to a shelf in the fridge.  We got lucky and had an entire shelf to ourselves, so we went grocery shopping and tried to cook lunch and dinner as much as possible.  There was a great bar around the corner where everyone knew our name by the time we left.  The thing to do in this town; however was take a water taxi out to the other beaches and islands and this is where it really started to shine.  You could find your own secluded spot away from anything and enjoy it, or you could walk a ways and find some beach chairs and restaurants serving up all sorts of different food and drinks and it was cheap!  $1.50 beers on the beach is unheard of everywhere else!

We took a 13 hour bus ride from Bocas into Panama City since we were flying out of there to Los Angeles.  The ‘highlight’ of our time in Panama City was that our hostel we were staying in caught on fire! We were sitting out by the pool when I hear Mandy say, “What’s that smell?”  About that time I see people pointing towards what looks like the roof of our hostel so I walk outside and sure enough, there’s smoke coming from the restaurant next door.  So I run inside and Mandy is already upstairs getting our passports out of the lockers.  I open the door to our room and a huge cloud of black smoke comes out.  I ran in to grab our bags and managed to get two of them in my hands before the owner was (rightly) telling us to GTFO!

In the end, we lost our two travel towels, and our awesome bathroom bag we got from REI. A few shirts and some other toiletries that we’d have to replace in Los Angeles as well. We were lucky it was in the middle of the day and most of the hostel was out exploring the town and no one was hurt.  We got moved to another hostel that night and spent the rest of our time there.

Los Angeles to Australia to New Zealand

We flew out of Panama City to Houston where we had to go through the entire security line again after we landed even though we had a connecting flight.  We barely made it for our flight from Houston to Los Angeles.  We had arranged our flights so that we would be spending a night in L.A. in a hotel right by the airport so we could get caught up on laundry and we also had to re-stock on some things before we flew out.  The next night at 11:30, we got on a plane for Australia on Qantas airlines, which is my new favorite airline.  They had free, new movies and awesome food and drinks, so while Mandy tried to sleep on the plane, I watched the new Star Wars movie again, Interstellar, and a few episodes of Band of Brothers.

We landed in Australia in Melbourne and had a decision to make.  We had about 15 hours to kill here, so we could either stay in the airport and chill, or leave.  We looked into it and it was going to cost us a ridiculous amount of money to leave the airport between storing our bags, getting the bus into town, and on top of all of this, we hadn’t planned anything here, so we had no clue what we would have done.  We would also have had to come back to the airport and go back through security, plus we knew we were coming back to Australia after New Zealand and to top it of…we were jetlagged to hell and back.  The sun was still up but my watch said it was 3 in the morning back home and I just couldn’t shake it.  So we found a secluded spot in the airport that wasn’t being used, and had some charging stations.  I also found a shower for free!  After Central America, I was expecting everything to cost at least a little something.  So we showered, got some food, and made use of the free wifi in the airport.  Looking back, I should have been writing in my blog, but I was exhausted.  I ended up falling asleep for a little bit before our flight out to Auckland.

Mandy’s post script!

Costa Rica:

Moon House B&B was great!! We enjoyed our time there and thank you for helping with all the activities we did. We would never have thought of doing white water rafting but it was a wounderful experience.

It might sound cheap and cool to stay in a hostel that has camping tents and mattress for a very low cost…yea you get what you pay for $6 a night lol

Panama:

You know we love our beach towns and Panama did not disappoint but man it was HOT there. Panama City kinda wish we went and saw the Panama Canal… maybe next time.

Every time I get into our daypack backpack and can still smell the fire on it I am so grateful that we walked away with a travel story and 99% of our stuff and passports.